A Clearing in the Wild (14 page)

I savored the flushed faces of friends there to see us off, knowing our leader approved of their delaying the start of their workday in order to celebrate this adventure. Well, he didn’t call it an adventure. To our leader and his spies we performed the Lord’s work, undertook a serious and purposeful activity. I tried to remember that, but the sweet scent of spring and the profusion of faces there to see us off kept bringing me back to joy.

Christian’s somber face reminded me of the concern expressed by our elders about why we were making this journey. The evils of the outside world pushed us into it. Outsiders lured Bethelites away. The railroad threatened to steam through our town, bringing strangers from even farther off to wash away the established colony routines. Our leader worried that we young people were losing our piety and ability to follow God. Hadn’t there been rumors of an unplanned infant born into the fold? Hadn’t that young girl and her family moved away? These intrusions brought us to this day, not the adventure of a journey into the unknown. Yet that uncertain unknown called to me.

I took deep breaths, tried to soak up every sight and sound and smell of this stepping-off place. I would see things and hear things and know news no one here would learn of unless we told them. I coughed into my handkerchief to veil the grin that would not leave my face.

I learned then of more details worked out in advance by the many meetings Christian held with the others. Fred, my horse, would walk in front of Opal, a white mule I had sometimes walked behind when spelling my brother in the fields. Opal’s packs carried a dutch oven and ten tin plates and cups that Christian, one of the colony’s finest tinsmiths, had made himself. We scouts—as I preferred to think of us—packed pemmican made not of buffalo meat, but of beef cut into thin flakes and hung to dry before a smoking fire. Papa pounded it into a powder, then packed it into skin bags and poured grease in it to make it solid and sound. We could eat it raw or boil it with a little flour and have a nutritious meal quickly prepared. Flour, tea, sugar, biscuits, Edward’s Preserved Potatoes, and cooking grease were packed in canvas bags, enough to take us all across, we hoped, knowing that as we moved west, the prices for products would go up.

Papa also suggested a mixture of cornmeal, cinnamon, and sugar, which he said I should stir into water for a good drink along the trail. His eyes teared up as he told me, a tenderness I’d savor as the miles between us grew.

My mother packed the mixture in an oversized oiled bag and patted it as she pulled the flap over the side of the pack. “When it’s empty, you can use it for so many tings,” she told me.

Other items needed we planned to barter from better-stocked wagon trains or buy at the forts along the way; we expected to shoot deer or elk as the occasion arose. We’d need to be careful with ammunition, but being frugal and orderly were a Bethel colonist’s middle name. Anything we couldn’t get for a “good deal,” we’d do without, though Christian said
we had money enough to look prosperous to appeal to potential recruits, but not so wealthy we invited the attention of thieves.

Christian announced these arrangements to the entire crowd, as a way of engaging each of them in this journey and so they’d know how to pray for us in the days ahead.

We hoped for a wet spring in the prairies so by the time we rode through, the grass would be high and lush and our horses and mules able to feed. Michael Schaefer Sr. silenced anyone who aired concern about Indian troubles or disease we might encounter on the way. “We do the Lord’s work,” he said. “Worrying is not part of our labor.”

“
Ja
,” John Stauffer said. “If I thought it so, I would not have brought my son with me.” Hans Stauffer was stockier and taller than his father, the son a security for his father and each of us.

My youngest sisters and littlest brother played and patted Sheppie. They didn’t understand that I’d not be seeing them for months, though when the girls sprawled their elbows out at night, they might remember me with fondness by my absence. Catherine actually cried as she said good-bye, then pressed a small German Bible into my hands. “You’ll need this,” she said.

“Christian will have his along,” I told her, attempting to hand it back. “We can only take so much.”

“Take it,” my mother said. “Each of us needs our own bowl of wisdom from which to draw without having to ask another.”

Later I’d be more than grateful for both my mother’s words and the book Catherine gave me.

Mother fussed at the cape she wore against the morning chill. My father shook young Joe Knight’s hand, then turned to his old friend, Adam Schuele. “I remember when we were sent out those years ago.” Adam nodded. “Your good judgment kept us from trouble more than once. This time you have my daughter to look after.”

“
Ja
,” Joseph Knight interjected. “For better or worse.” He looked at me but didn’t smile.

“The prayers of the community, David,” Adam Schuele said. “This is what will keep her safe. And us, too.”

I tried not to think of the sadness in my father’s eyes, focused instead on his hand gently resting on my mother’s shoulder as she tried to untie her cape and keep William in check. Successful, she threw the dark green wool around my shoulders and pulled me to her. I felt the bones in her back, tried not to notice how she quivered in my arms. “When you need a mother’s holding,” she said, “you put this on and think of me, Emma.” The cape hung longer than my own, since she stood taller than I.

“I will, Mama,” I whispered, “I will.”

Finally, it was time. I held each of my sisters and brothers in turn, told Mary I would write. Christian mounted without offering me assistance, so I led Fred to the riding stump and stepped onto the stirrup, swinging my leg high enough to hook my knee over the saddle hook. I had never felt secure on a sidesaddle and more than once had ventured through a field bareback on a nag, just to see what it would be like to ride with greater confidence. But this day I took it as a small sacrifice made to join my husband on this journey.

I adjusted my wrapper over my legs. The wrappers we women wore when we left the colony to go to Shelbina or Hannibal or other outside places served me well now. Made of wool the color of a wet ash, it folded in at a woman’s waist and tied with a sash but had room for growth. The overfold prevented anyone from seeing a woman’s curves or their absence when she lost them to a growing infant. Like a chrysalis, my wrapper kept the secret of my butterfly beneath its gray.

I laid Mama’s cape out over the back of Fred, who pranced a bit, and I nearly dropped Catherine’s Bible. I placed it in the saddle pack,
then tied the front of the cape at my neck. My mother’s hug wrapped me up in her lavender scent.

Adam Schuele’s family waved good-bye. All the Giesy clan came out to say farewell to us, or at least to Christian, who steadied his horse next to mine now. Helena did pat my knee as it hung over the sidesaddle. She said she hoped I chose well and that it wasn’t too late to change my mind.

“
Herr
Keil will understand if you decided to stay behind,” she said quietly as she looked up at me. “He has a gentle heart and would listen to the pleas of a young woman.”

“
Herr
Keil is the one who told me I should go. I wouldn’t want to upset him,” I said. “It’s for the good of the colony,” I added. “What a woman sees and sends back will reassure the rest of you when you follow. Besides”—I leaned over to her to keep my voice low—“I wouldn’t want to challenge Father Keil.”

Helena stepped back, her lips pursed. She folded her hands before her as though in prayer. Our leader stood in the center of the half circle we scouts formed around him. He draped his arm around Willie’s shoulder. “Willie vill ride in the lead vagon when we leave Bethel to go to the place you choose for us. All of us depend on you now, each of you, to listen to God’s Vord and His voice to lead you to the very best place for us to continue His vork. Pay attention to each other,” our leader said. “Send back vord of vhat you’ve found and we vill follow. Be salt and light in this new vorld.”

Following this he offered us a blessing general enough to include even me, and the brass band played a German marching song that made my eyes water, knowing it’d be months, maybe years, before I’d hear those horns again.

We started out, and then my brother Jonathan ran along beside us, as did several other young men, Sheppie, and a few other dogs, until we
rode around the bend that marked the outskirts of Bethel. There Jonathan grabbed at Sheppie’s collar, and the men stood and waved until my brother was nothing more than a tiny dark thread in the quilt that had been the comfort of the only home I’d known. I felt an awful chill.

The first day, Christian told me, would be our “rhythm day,” finding the preferences of the animals, which horse needed to be in the lead, which could follow easily behind another without wanting to rush ahead, which pack mules would likely tangle us up if we didn’t attend to their wishes. None of us owned the mules or the horses we rode, as they belonged to the colony, but Christian at least sat astride a horse familiar to him, unlike the rest of the men and me. The pack animals, too, needed time to adjust to their loads and the hitch of the ropes keeping everything even.

When the road toward St. Joseph narrowed, I brought up the rear, usually with Christian and his pack animal riding beside me. Opal, the mule, pulled against Fred at times, twisting the horse, but with occasional words from me to the mule, Fred was able to move along easily again. “Opal likes attention,” I told Christian, who responded with something that sounded like, “She’s in good company.” But when I asked him to repeat it, he said, “She’s in a good place in this company then. You can talk to her back here and keep her in line.”

I’d vowed to be as quiet a scout as I could be, not to question what Christian did or directed, and to treat the men with deference and respect. They did know much more than I about being out in the world, and I vowed to watch them as I did my husband. Silence was my word for the day. Silence and listening and seeing so much I’d never seen before.

We rode on dusty trails northwest and passed small acreages with men and women already working their fields in the early spring. Cowbells joined the music of the lambs’ bleating, and I could almost taste the feast of new life that always came with the melting of snow. We rested the animals ten minutes of each hour, allowing them to rip at grass while the men checked packs and took drinks of water. The other fifty minutes, we rode steady with little chatter.

It’s what I wrote in my journal that evening:
silence
, the whisper of wind while I slept beneath the stars for the first time in my life, the quiet warmth rising as I lay next to my husband in a bedroll, the comforting noise of fingers scraping on tin plates and the smack of lips with our first meal of beef jerky and hard biscuits washed down with spring water. The men said nothing while we shared the meal that Adam Schuele prepared, not me. I wondered if it would be this way all the way to Oregon Territory, and if the meal was an offering of servanthood by Adam or a statement of no confidence in my abilities. When I tried to help he said, with gentle words, “I’m accustomed to this, Sister Giesy. Let me.”

Following the meal, Christian offered a Scripture and words of prayer and encouragement—at least that was how I took them. The men nodded and kept their heads bowed as my husband spoke, rising as one to his “Amen,” then moving in silence toward their bedrolls.

In the notepad I packed, I wrote of being away from the sounds of the shoe factory, the mill, church bells, the cackling of geese, the thump-thump of my mother kneading dough in the morning, my father sharpening a knife against a big strap of leather, Jonathan riding a horse down the streets of Bethel followed by yips from the dog, William’s little snores that sounded like kitten whimpers. I wrote of hearing my husband preach for the first time—at least it seemed like a sermon—and how humble he acted, how willing he appeared to be
molded by what the Lord should provide, and his trust in the mission our leader had set us all on.

The other men laid their bedrolls some distance from us, but I could hear an occasional cough and a mumble; a moment of laughter, too, and I wondered if Christian missed being with them, felt stuck here with me. He would have been lying next to them; perhaps they’d share ideas about the route, about the day, about life.

Yet here he was with me. I hoped he wouldn’t come to resent my presence.

“I wish we’d brought a dog along,” I told Christian in a whisper as I put my notepad away and crawled in beside him.

“
Ja
, Adam Knight said that too. A dog would let us know when trouble comes. We should have thought of it.”

“There’ll be dogs along the way,” I said. “Maybe we could find one that would suit us.”

“Unless he was a pup, he’d be loyal to another and eventually leave us anyway,” he said. “And a pup would give us headaches getting into the packs at night, chewing the saddle strings.”

“I’d watch him,” I said.